Points of Articulation

yo go re

Let's all be brutally honest right up front: if you're reading this, you're a geek. Why else would you be on our site? The fancy dessert recipes? Of course not. We talk toys, and that attracts a certain crowd. Oh, it's nothing to be embarrassed by: we're all geeks here! It isn't just you; the OAFEs are every bit the huge nerds we seem to be.

Anyway, if there's one universal truth in the world of geekery, it's this: there are more geeky guys than there are geeky girls. Add to that the (not entirely undeserved) stereotype that we're socially awkward dorks, and it's no surprise that so many of us have trouble finding a girlfriend who shares our geeky interests, even beginning to doubt that such a kind of girl exists.

This girl out-geeks you even when she's not dressed as the Baroness.

But trust us, they do. There are girls out there who, though they may not seem it, geek out every bit as much as boys do. It's just a question of knowing how to find them, and then how to treat them. We may not be experts on the subject, but we'll still try to give you some tips. Don't think we're qualified? Consider Monkey Boy's girlfriend, Human Girl. Dr. Mrs. the Ghostal is, well, a doctor. Shocka is a borderline sociopath with the physique of a boiled noodle, but he's still got girls clinging to him like a Frank Frazetta painting.

Just another typical day in Australia.

So we can't claim to have all the answers, but we must have been doing something right. We're going to try to share our experiences with you, to help you find that she-geek of your own.

Obviously, if you never meet a geeky girl, you'll never interact with her and never have a chance to go beyond that. So the first thing you need to do is go where the girls are. Or, to put that in "toy nerd" terms, you're not going to find that Toys Я Us exclusive if you only ever shop at Wal*Mart.

Of course, there are some exceptions.

Consider the places you yourself normally go: toy stores, electronics stores, probably the comicshop on Wednesday afternoons... that's your comfort zone. If those places were swamped with girls, then hey, you wouldn't need this step. Of course, odds are the only people you see when you go there are other nerds just as pasty and desperate as yourself. And they probably all have a penis, so no luck there, either.

What you need to do is expand your "territory." If the girls aren't coming to you (and they're not), then you need to go to the girls. That may be the hardest part of this process: determining the mindset of these wholly alien creatures known as "females" and figuring out how they spend their time.

When searching for a geek girl, you can't do the quote/unquote "normal" things, the things that all-purpose pickup guides would suggest. Take, for instance, bars. The general idea is to go out, get lubricated by alcohol, and meet new people, right? Well, that's a great way to meet bar skanks, but unless you're in San Diego during Comic-Con weekend, the odds of finding a geek girl in a bar are worse than the chances of successfully navigating an asteroid field. You need someone who not only gets an obscure Star Wars reference like that, but also won't think you're a loser for using it, and a bar is not the place to find them.

He'd rather be LARPing.

Honestly, men and women aren't all that different. Think about the personality of your average geek: somewhat shy and reserved in public, but fiercely interested in the things they care about and ready to have fun with their friends. That applies to vagina-bearing geeks just as much as it does to the ones with everything on the outside. A geek girl may go out partying with her friends, but she won't be the one leading the charge. Look for the wallflower, so to speak, the one in the group who looks like she'd never be there on her own.

Contrary to popular opinion (and even to what we said above), girls do frequent comicshops and game stores. After all, girls are into comics and games and everything else guys are into, and those are the places where they can indulge. That doesn't mean, however, that you're going to be able to chat up a single, comic-loving female on a Wednesday afternoon. Think about it: if you went somewhere and had a slew of gawkers clumsily trying to hit on you, would you want to go there again? Of course not. But if it's some place you had to go? Well, you'd go at a time when the NQ - Nerd Quotient - was lower. You may see girls at the shop on Wednesday, or outside Gamestop waiting for the newest midnight release, but those are the high-profile geek girls, and they're probably already taken. Remember, a casual geek is still a geek.

On Tuesdays, I go to game night at my local comicshop. Technically, "non-CCG night," which means it's not the Magic The Gathering weirdos or the crowd who can throw thousands of dollars at Warhammer. Anyway, you'd be amazed at how many women browse the comics on a Tuesday evening. Consider Wednesday afternoon ground zero for a comicshop's nerd infestation: they all come in on New Comics Day to get their weekly fix. Those that can't make it on Wednesday come Thursday; the few that miss Thursday come Friday; and so on in that fashion, with smaller numbers of people getting the new things as the week progresses. Thus, Monday and Tuesday are the slowest days, the days that are most "nerd-free," and you'll see more girls coming in then, looking for some new, interesting books to pick up, because they know they won't get hassled.

"I just want to read quietly!"

That formula, by the way, can be applied to any geek hobby with a regular "new release" day. Videogames and dvds? Always come out on Tuesdays, so Monday would be a good day to shop unmolested. Unfortunately, that also means toy fans have no easy hints, since we don't have the benefit of standardized releases.

Since we've already eliminated bars as a place to randomly interact with geeky strangers, where do you go? Well, anyplace with wifi is a good start - you hate to be disconnected, and so do they. Beyond that, try bookstores. Lots of geek girls have a love of reading, making Borders, Waldenbooks or even used book stores and the library a great place to go. Grab a chair and stake out the tpbs or the sci-fi/fantasy section - it should be easy; they're usually near each other. Read a book or a graphic novel you've been meaning to check out. If you see a girl perusing the shelves, politely introduce yourself and ask her what she's been reading. Get some recommendations, and share some of your own. Yeah, you might strike out a few times, but that's true of any attempt at meeting someone. She might be married, dating, or just not that interested in talking to you. You can't go out once and expect to come home with 40 phone numbers - it's far more likely those statistics would be reversed. No one said finding a geek girl would be easy, but the effort will be totally worth your time.

Oftentimes, the stereotypical geek is a basement-dwelling loser with a body by Krispy Kreme and a highly abrasive attitude - you know, the Comic Book Guy archetype. And apparently, some guys think that holds true for the female fanboys as well. That if you want a "nerd girl" of your own, you have to settle for the first unfortunate looking woman who merely doesn't stop talking to you when she finds out you own more pairs of Hulk Hands than bottles of wine.

Oh yeah, now it's party time.

That is emphatically not the case. Fellows, are you a greasy landmonster who shuns sunlight so children won't be frightened by your face? Of course not. Obviously I can't see who's reading this, but you're probably an average-looking guy who's nice enough to talk to for a while, but could stand to be in slightly better shape. Just playing the odds, here. If you were a golden Adonis with a championship personality, you'd already find it easy to meet girls and would have tired of our foolish article long ago.

Anyway, if you're a geek boy and you're not a hideous loser, why would you expect geek girls to be? That's stupid. There are absolutely attractive, single geek girls out there, just as there are attractive girls in every other hobby. Consider another traditional "male oriented" pastime, like football. Watching football is supposed to be a "guy thing," right? A bunch of meatheads paint themselves up, go tailgating, then freeze their shirts off in the stands. And you can't tell me that sports aren't geeky. It's not even that different! Mr. Sportsguy can name the entire starting lineup of the '85 Dolphins? How is that any more acceptable or less trivial than knowing who was on the X-Men during the Outback years? Those guys are geeks, sure as you are; they're just geeks for something else. Still, football is for men, right?

But if you watch a game on tv and pay attention to crowd shots, what do you see? You see women, enjoying the game every bit as much as the guys are. Those are girls, taking part in a geeky activity. Some of them were that interested to begin with, while others had their interest encouraged by their husbands, boyfriends or whatever. And why? Well, brace yourself, because we're about to reveal one of girls' deep, dark secrets:

Girls want to meet guys just as much as guys want to meet girls.

Velma Dinkley, patron saint of geek girls.

I know, shocking, isn't it? A truly scandalous revelation. TV and movies depict women as disinterested parties who must be won over, but guys, girls want all the same things you do. A geeky girl is looking for a geeky guy just like you, someone who will share her hobbies. Given the choice between a drunken party girl and an awesome geektrix, you'd choose the latter, right? Well given the choice between you and a mountain-climbing rockstar, that same girl is going to choose you. We geeks may have some self-esteem issues, but dude, you're a catch. You just don't know it.

That doesn't mean you don't need to work at it. Yes, a she-geek will be interested in you, but there are still a lot more available guys than girls, so she can afford to be choosy. So it's up to you to make yourself attractive to her - and no, we don't mean sculpting your abs and growing your hair out to look like Sawyer from Lost (though it probably wouldn't hurt). Attracting a geek girl is about much more than looks.

l.) yo go re works on a new review for the site.
r.) Mrs. yo enjoys spending quality time with her books.

You know why the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads failed? Because people who care enough about computers to give a damn whether they get a Mac or a PC like John Hodgman more than they like Justin Long. Hodgman's a total nerd, but he's still an idol. And just like the computers they're anthropomorphizing, brainy and hardworking beats pretty and flashy any day. Long may look better than Hodgman, but there's no question which one the geek girl would go home with.

If you want to get in a geek girl's pants, you've first got to get in her brain. You need to be interesting, to have something to say. Geeks are smart, and you need to be able to engage her on her own level. Read new books, watch new movies, and be ready to share your insights about them with her. Have a grown-up discussion about a geeky topic. Horror movies. The benefits of backwards compatibility and an established library vs. online play and DLC. What your favorite podcasts are and why. It's not about quoting trivia or giving a book report, but having an opinion and being able to share it intelligently. For a geek, that's the equivalent of buying her flowers.

Once again, a typical geek girl's idea of fun doesn't involve large quantities of alcohol - so asking her out for drinks isn't the way to go. You'd probably have better luck setting up a night of board games. Look into things that work well for two players, like Zombies or Red Dragon Inn. The site Board Game Geek is a good resource for learning about games, to tell you which are great for a quiet night in - after all, you don't want to pick something that's going to start a fight, you know? Nobody ever got laid off a game of Monopoly.

Well, SOMEbody's getting some tonight, at least.

If you can't find a geeky girl who's as obsessed as you are, don't worry: it's entirely possible to find a "normal" girl and unlock her geekery over time. My wife had always been into fantasy novels, but my lending her Sandman was a gateway drug to a weekly comicbook habit. She watched the X-Men cartoon, but now that's expanded into a taste for anime. Don't think you need to hold out for that special girl who knows how to mod her Xbox or leads her own WoW guild: a girl who wants to game with you (or even just watch as you play your game of choice) is already a bit of a geek, whether she admits it or not, and that will grow with encouragement.

On the other side of the coin, you need to be open to her specific areas of interest. Maybe she loves to cook. Maybe she knits. Maybe she squees with delight every time she sees a My Little Pony. Maybe she can sure kick your ass at a game of ping pong. Maybe she likes to cosplay, not because you think Leia is hot, but because she does. Who knows. Whatever it is, embrace it. If you want her to love your geek habits, you have to love hers. Find that middle ground. Or, in videogame terms: if she's into JRPGs and you're hardcore Halo, you need to find the Mass Effect that will bring you together. Indulge her passions.

ALL her passions.

Remember, though, that just because you hate something, it doesn't mean your geek girl won't like it. Last summer, after SDCC, there were all these articles online complaining about how Twilight ruined Comic-Con. Really? "Ruined?" Yes, Twilight is crap. It's a self-insertion fic that should never have been published outside of Livejournal, but that doesn't matter. You know what Twilight did? It brought thousands - thousands - of girls to Nerdstock, and every one of them, even if they don't realize it or would never admit it, are geeks. They're geeks for something terrible, but they're still geeks. And they're far from the first girls to go to San Diego.

Ruined FOREVER.

You know what? You like some terrible things, too. So do I. I started reading comics because I liked Rob Liefeld's art, but my tastes matured. Right now those girls like Twilight, but that doesn't mean it's all they'll ever like. Sparkly vampires have unlocked the potential geekery of an entire army of girls, and no matter what you think of the series, you can't deny the benefit of that. The more geek girls there are, the better the odds get. Yes, the average Edward Cullen fangirl is underage, but she's not going to be 14 forever - in a couple years, there's going to be a slew of female geeks looking for someone to share their hobbies with, and they'll probably be a little bit mortified to admit Twilight is where it started. So to say Twilight ruined Comic-Con is idiotic and short-sighted. Your girl isn't going to be into everything you're into, so you don't need to like everything of hers. Don't judge.

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "stomp the yard."

No, finding that perfect geek girl isn't easy. It's a competitive field, but when has that ever stopped us? Come on, we're collectors! We'll wait in three-hour lines or bluff our way into the back of stores to get what we want. And if you can do things that insane for ultimately worthless lumps of plastic, can't you go out of your way to woo the girl who will love them with you?